https ://www. forbes. com/sites/evangerstmann/2021/02/05/supreme-court-will-decide-whether-police-can-enter-a-home-to-seize-guns-without-a-warrant/
Supreme Court Will Decide Whether Police Can Enter A Home To Seize Guns Without A Warrant
Evan Gerstmann Senior Contributor Education
There is a vigorous debate about whether the community care exception can apply to searches of a person’s home as well as of their car. Vehicles have always had less 4th Amendment protection than homes, which are considered a person’s most private sphere. Federal courts have been divided on this question and the Supreme Court has not ruled on it until now.
The Court has just announced that it will hear arguments next month on a case that presents this issue: Caniglia v. Strom. In this case, Mr. Caniglia was arguing with his wife and melodramatically put an unloaded gun on the table and said “shoot me now and get it over with.” His wife called a non-emergency number for the police who arrived shortly thereafter. The police disagreed about whether Mr. Caniglia was acting “normal” or “agitated” but they convinced him to take an ambulance to the local hospital for evaluation. The police did not accompany him.
While he was on his way to the hospital, Mrs. Caniglia told the police that her husband kept two handguns in the home. The police decided to search his home for the guns without obtaining a warrant. (Mrs. Caniglia’s consent to have the police search their home was legally negated because the police untruthfully told her that her husband had consented to the seizure of any guns.) The police located and seized the two guns. Mr. Caniglia sued for the violation of his 4th Amendment right to privacy and his 2nd Amendment right to keep handguns in the home for self-protection.
The 1st Circuit Court of Appeals (which is the federal court just below the Supreme Court in Caniglia’s jurisdiction) sided with the police. The court wrote: “At its core, the community caretaking doctrine is designed to give police elbow room to take appropriate action when unforeseen circumstances present some transient hazard that requires immediate attention. Understanding the core purpose of the doctrine leads inexorably to the conclusion that it should not be limited to the motor vehicle context. Threats to individual and community safety are not confined to the highways.”
Except the expectation of privacy you have between your house and your home are alarmingly different things because of exactly what you said:
It's not just that you have less, it's that you basically have almost none in a vehicle. If the car is stopped, and the police have reasonable suspicion you may have been involved in a crime, they can take you out of your car and search you for weapons.
The logic is that if the police stop you in public, they are allowed to search you for weapons for their own safety. If you are in public and the police have reasonable suspicion that you may have been involved in a crime, they are allowed to detain you along your car, they may search you and your car for weapons in the immediate reach of the driver (which is the glove-box and most of the passenger compartment).
Your trunk can't be searched without probable cause. Meaning that the police think you did commit a specific crime that they can articulate. They are no longer checking the car for weapons to protect themselves, they are searching the car for evidence of your crime.
This shit-fuck judge is arguing that your house has less 4th amendment protections than your fucking trunk.
The car was being impounded. It was in the possession of the police. There is a concern that the cops may need to have related to the fact that a loaded gun might be hanging around in a fucking impound lot. That's about a hundred million miles away from going into someone's home and removing their property without any relationship to a crime.
Relevant 4th Amendment Flowchart
There was no crime. And:
This is literally a full retard moment. The cops let the guy go to a hospital without escort, then lied so they could go inside and steal the guy's guns.
You'd think that would have been enough for a judge to throw the case out on its face and side with the home owner. We're not arguing here about whether or not police should be allowed wiggle room under the guise of "community caretaking", we're arguing about whether police are allowed to lie and steal while conducting unlawful searches.